When Milwaukee Alderman Jonathan Brostoff, a former state Assembly representative, died by suicide Monday, Nov. 4, it was after months of bullying tied to his identity as a Jew and supporter of Israel, according to longtime friends and colleagues.
Social media attacks from former friends and allies broke his heart, they say. Longtime friends reportedly ostracized Brostoff and his wife. Then, just before his death, the Shepherd Express – the city’s storied alternative newspaper – named him a finalist for “Most Despised Politician.”
Brostoff talked with friends about how he was treated. Several people interviewed said it weighed on him considerably.
Brostoff wrote in local media that in the past he experienced mental health challenges. In multiple interviews with people who knew him, nobody suggested the bullying of Brostoff was the only cause of his death by suicide. But friends say the bullying, including rejection by some on the left who were close to him, must have been a factor.
Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman, his friend, is among those who see a connection between the alderman’s tragic death and how Brostoff was treated after Oct. 7, 2023. “He told me about how he suffered with it,” Wasserman said.
Brostoff, who was 41, is survived by wife Diana Vang-Brostoff, four children, parents Phyllis Mensh Brostoff and Alan Saul Brostoff, and other family and friends.
How it all unfolded
Hamas and its allies invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The attackers killed about 1,200 people, coinciding with acts of rape and torture. More than 250 were kidnapped. Some on the left immediately turned against Jews and Israel, showing little to no concern for the carnage.
Brostoff, a longtime progressive who was pro-Israel and proudly Jewish, quickly posted about the attacks on social media. The response was harsh and negative, according to longtime friend Alexa Safer. People either said the attacks were fake or that they were legitimate resistance, she said.
Later that month, Brostoff texted Elana Kahn, a former editor of this newspaper and former head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council. He texted: “Praying for you and all of our family there and everywhere. It’s lonely to be a Jew in this world right now, we have to be there for each other and we have to continue.”
Next, in November 2023, he talked with Safer, his friend who he had marched and rallied with on at least 100 occasions to make the point that Black lives matter, too. He told her that he was “heartbroken” over how he had been villainized, she said.
At one point, Safer recalls saying to him: “These are people we marched with for a year. Don’t they know who we are? Don’t they know our hearts? He was just like, ‘I know.’ We both were in the same place. We felt betrayed and we felt heartbroken by the left.”
Wasserman said he doesn’t agree with some of his friends on politics, and that it’s important to be open to people with different views. It’s part of why he feels that what happened to Brostoff was just wrong: “Some of his best friends turned on him, and they ignored him. They ostracized him and his wife.”
There were attacks against Brostoff on social media. People called him a “Nazi” and accused him of genocide. Some of the attacks came from old friends, among them people with public roles in Milwaukee. Safer was getting the same kinds of attacks, and the pair compared notes, she recalled.
Rabbi Yisroel Lein, the spiritual leader of Chabad of the East-Side, has shared countless Shabbat dinners with Brostoff. Lein described Brostoff as a man who fought for so many causes in Milwaukee: “He marched down the streets. He got arrested. God knows how many times. I mean, every single minority group in the city he marched with, he supported, he stood by them, and suddenly, to have some of those same people turn their backs on him, he took it very, very hard.”
Lein added: “Being the authentic person that he was, he wouldn’t back down.” Lein sees Brostoff as a son of Milwaukee, who attended local public schools and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, learning to be an activist in his hometown.
It’s part of why the encampment at UWM, a block from Brostoff’s house, was so maddening. Brostoff and his longtime friend, Victor Shikhman, of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, once ran clubs at the school as students, and they felt the encampment violated the kinds of rules that they once had to follow. “Forget it, we would have been expelled immediately,” Shikhman said.
An agreement in May, between the University and encampment advocates, raised the ire of much of Jewish Milwaukee. It was seen as capitulating. Brostoff brought his opposition to the agreement, with a strong sense of determination on the issue, to a meeting with Chancellor Mark Mone, said Shikhman, who strategized with Brostoff before the meeting.
Several sources who were interviewed for this story asked not to be named, with some fearing retribution. People critical of Brostoff gathered outside his home, motivated by the conflict in the Middle East, according to sources. One wondered what a city alderman is supposed to even do about what happens in the Middle East.
Lana Holman, a close family friend who lives several blocks from Brostoff, has seen him at the block parties she works on, and elsewhere. “He was very upset” about the encampment, Holman said. “He also had a lot of political friends that didn’t stand up for him about the issue. That upset him a lot, and he talked to us about that.”
Diana Vang-Brostoff, Jonathan Brostoff’s wife, spoke at the funeral on Nov. 8, at the Helene Zelazo Center at UWM, through tears. “It has been so horrible. Jonathan felt so alone at the end of his life. I see all these people in this room I haven’t seen, and I’m devastated,” she said. “It’s just unbelievable.”
When the Shepherd Express published its list of “Best of Milwaukee” finalists in its November 2024 edition, it was just before Brostoff’s death. He was listed as a finalist for the category, “Most Despised Politician.” As a result, much anger has been directed toward the Shepherd Express on social media.
“We provide the questions. It’s all reader-generated. So it was not us who put Jonathan in that category,” said Louis Fortis, publisher of the Shepherd Express. In the wake of Brostoff’s death, the publication contacted an out-of-state company that manages the contest to remove the category from the internet, Fortis told the Chronicle.
Shortly before Brostoff’s death, on Nov. 4, Brostoff texted Shikhman about a project they were working on to help Jews unify through gatherings. Brostoff wrote to his friend: “No matter what please make Jewnity happen.”
That was the last message Shikhman received.
“Antisemitism caused Jonathan great pain. Perhaps a greater pain than most Jews felt,” said state Assembly Rep. Daniel Riemer, about Brostoff, his childhood friend. Brostoff believed in a better world.
“What was great about him is just that he always focused on other people,” said Holman, a local artist. “And he considered everything that he was doing a mitzvah, trying to help people make the world a better place.”
And, Safer noted: “Jonathan was a Zionist to the core. He loved Israel.”
Safer posted on social media – on a page frequented by progressives – that Brostoff was bullied to death. She saw Brostoff the Tuesday before he died: “He was voting, and I was working early voting, and I could just tell that he was a little off. He wasn’t, honestly, he wasn’t his usual bubbly Jonathan; there was something I could feel. There was a weight on him, and so I went up to him, and I gave him a huge hug, and I kissed him, and I told him that I loved him, that we all, we all love him, and how much we all need him.”
“And he said, ‘I love you too, Alexa,’ and that was it. I mean, that was it.”
* * *
* * *
Loading ...